The following is meant to be a comprehensive guide to building a CMWW wizard. There are sections for people completely new to the build (beginner), people somewhat familiar with the build (intermediate), and those trying to maximize performance with the build (Advanced). Feel free to skip to the appropriate section as needed. The guide includes some different build variants plus stat goals to reach for a few different MP levels. These stat goals are not set in stone and are just recommendations based on my personal experience and the recommendations of others, namely the MP10 general requirements floating around the official forums.

The basic portion of the CMWW build is WW, DS, FN, EB, some armor spell, and the CM, Cold Blooded (CB), and Evocation passives. The last 2 passives are somewhat optional but most use both even at top of the line gear levels. Blur is probably the most popular other passive used, either in place of CB for wizards who aren't concerned about DPS or Evocation. There is also one extra skill slot that is mostly optional with a few prime choices. Additionally, the runes on DS, FN, and EB have several options. Overall there are a surprising number of options for the spec. The extreme builds (max defense and max dps) are listed below.

For reference, SNS means ShockNadoShards which refers to Shocking Aspect, tornados (i.e., WW), and Diamond Shards. It’s the most commonly talked about variation on the official forums because it has the highest potential dps of the CMWW builds. When farming with CMWW, I recommend using SNS if possible, even if you have to lower the MP in order to survive rather than switching to energy armor. If needed, you can swap to crystal shell for extra survivability but don’t get rid of SA because it adds a tremendous amount of dps (20-40% of your total DPS, roughly). Energy Armor is fine for Ubers though, especially if you’re trying higher MP Ubers with low armor/resists.

Diamond Skin (DS)

DS is a major mitigation tool. Like FN it has a CD but the purpose of the CM build is to refresh the CD so you can cast it very frequently. At high gear levels you can practically keep it active for entire duration of fights by refreshing it every second or two.

Diamond Shards – High dps rune, mainly used at really high mitigation levels. This is mostly a luxury rune and should be the last rune switched to when trying to maximize dps. In the max dps build this rune will provide around 5-15% extra dps.

Crystal Shell – High mitigation rune. Use this whenever survivability might be an issue.

Prism – Reduces AP cost of spells, which is very useful at low gear levels and likely will outperform shards when you’re below 20 APoC and 2.5 APS.

Frost Nova (FN)

FN is means to CC (crowd control) mobs. It uses an attack animation which means it will replace a WW cast when used. It has a considerable CD but when geared well you can cast it every 1-2 seconds, even against a single target. FN also works to lock mobs in place so they cannot move out of your WW.

Cold Snap – Good default rune to use. It will provide the highest uptime of FN, meaning if you want to keep mobs frozen more, use this rune. It’s great for Ubers even at high gear levels.

Bone Chill – Great group rune since the 15% bonus damage applies to the whole group. Highly recommended for key farming.

Deep Freeze – Another popular choice that I have mostly ignored because I’m of the opinion that crit loses effectiveness to some degree at higher gear levels. It also requires a lot of mobs around you so it’s pretty poor for Ubers.

Explosive Blast (EB)

EB is the main DPS spell in the build. It can be cast at any time if you have the AP, and can be cast simultaneously with any other spells.

Chain Reaction (CR) – This is the most popular choice because it is a good balance between burst and sustained dps.

Time Bomb – This is a lesser used rune, but it is the highest dps rune for long fights (such as Ubers).

Unleashed – This is also rarely used and often overlooked in favor of CR. This is the best rune to use when first starting out when you may be at low gear levels (low crit, IAS, and/or APoC).

Energy Twister – Wicked Wind

This is the main skill for the CMWW build. It does a decent amount of dps but the main purpose is to proc CM to reduce the CD on FN, DS, and EB. Some people use other runes like Mistral Breeze but I recommend only using WW.

The mechanics of WW are kind of odd in that the damage per cast is a flat 252% of your weapon damage. However, the higher your attack speed the more actual damage tics the WW does. Each tic procs your LoH and has a chance to proc CM. The general idea is there are breakpoints in your attacks per second (APS) when the number of tics per WW increases. Again, though the number of tics increases, the total damage done per cast remains the same.

For example, if your attack speed is 2.10, you are above the 2.0001 breakpoint but below the 2.14 breakpoint, so you’ll get 26 tics per WW cast. More about the individual breakpoints and recommendations about which breakpoint to reach is mentioned in the individual guides. Beginners shouldn’t worry about the breakpoints.

Sixth Skill Slot

As mentioned, there are numerous options for the last skill slot and the final choice depends on the player. The most popular choices are listed below but feel free to play around with other options that might appeal to you. Just remember you can only have 1 armor active a time, so if you were thinking of using another armor for your extra slot, it will mostly be a waste of a slot.

Teleport – The popular runes are wormhole, fracture, and safe passage. Calamity is not a good choice because it causes a knockback that is bad for the build.

Slow Time – The popular runes are Time Stretch, for extra IAS to reach higher WW breakpoints, and Time Warp for extra dps. Time Warp works on all mobs in the bubble so it is very useful in groups, particularly against Ubers, since you will typically be standing right on top of them. It does use an attack animation, but that doesn’t have much of an impact on the build when at high attack speeds. Time Stretch also works for groups but your group members must be standing inside your bubble to gain the benefits.

Magic Weapon – The popular runes are Blood Magic for some extra life regen, particularly for high dps gear sets, and Electrify for high AOE dps. Initial reports of Electrify indicate it gives more AOE dps than Slow Time but provides no benefit for single target dps. Force Weapon is not a good option because it causes knockback.

Section 2: Beginner’s Guide

This portion is meant for people first starting a CMWW wizard, both in gear and spec. For those with a large sum of gold who are thinking of breaking into the build, following this guide can lead to a very cheap build that you can use to see if you like the style of the spec before spending tens of millions of gold per item. The build can work for budgets as low as 1 mil gold, but mainly applies to low MP runs.

CMWW is a Critical Mass (CM) wizard build based around using WW to produce CM procs, reducing the cooldown (CD) on Diamond Shards (DS), Frost Nova (FN), and Explosive Blast (EB). It is often referred to as a melee build because it typically requires you to be in melee range of mobs since the area of effect (AOE) of most of your skills is small and based on where you are when casting them.

When first gearing for a CMWW wizard, you want to focus on crit%, APoC, LoH, and defensive stats (armor, resist, hp). Ignore crit damage, except for possibly on your weapon, and don’t worry about your char sheet dps. The initial goal is simply to gear for the build to make it work. If you start with a good amount of the above stats, you can run higher MP Ubers and still contribute. The main limiting factor to higher MP as a CMWW wizard is survivability, though higher MP isn’t very efficient with low DPS.

Many people recommend jumping at IAS to start and claim you need really high APS for the build to function but I can say from experience that IAS isn’t required, though it does make the build work better. Because of that I consider it secondary to the aforementioned stats, and more of an intermediate to advanced gearing stat.

Helm: Storm crow (with resist or crit chance if you can afford it)
Shoulders: Int/Vit/Armor/Resist All
Chest: same as shoulders
Belt: same as shoulders
Legs: same as shoulders or Blackthorn pants if you can afford it (aim for Armor, all resist, and/or physical resist in some combination, depending on budget)
Bracers: 3-4.5% crit depending on budget, high int, all resist, and armor if you can afford it
Gloves: 8%+crit, high int, resist, armor, and maybe vit if you can afford
Amulet: same as gloves
Rings: same as bracers
Boots: same as shoulders, movement speed optional, honorable mention to Zuni boots if using an all physical weapon.
Weapon: Sword/Wand/Dagger with IAS, preferably all physical damage, socket or crit damage optional, Int/Vit optional
OH: Triumvirate with APoC, as high average damage as is reasonable for the budget. I’d shoot for 9-10 APoC.

Obviously higher stats are better, and I recommend using 3 APoC items until your APS gets over 2.5, but the build still works with 17 APoC. The defensive stats can definitely be higher, especially if you want to run higher MP. In my opinion, defensive stats are the most important stats to the build. The better those stats the easier it becomes to run Ubers and the higher MP you can push. DPS might make farming higher MP less efficient but you can make up for some of that by using a high dps version of the spec. In general, I prefer to have DPS the limiting factor to what MP you pick, rather than survivability.

A cheap way to start with a decent chunk of dps is to use a fast 1h with all physical damage with a Triumvirate OH with APoC. I feel that’s the best way to start with a healthy chunk of DPS without sacrificing survivability and for a relatively low cost. You can also use Zuni boots with that combination for even more dps, and the boots come with vit and movement speed standard so they’re not too bad for beginner boots, though you can get Armor and resistances cheaper from other boots.

The general rule of thumb is only use Force Armor if you are fighting Ubers and need the extra defensive stats. Otherwise use Storm Armor – Shocking Aspect for farming as it provides 20-30% dps gain over energy armor. If you can’t survive with Diamond Shards, switch to Crystal Shell, or start with Crystal Shell and swap to shards if you don’t have any issues surviving. If you still can’t survive with crystal shell, lower the MP and keep SA. That will be the most efficient farming method. I also recommend teleport as the extra skill because it provides a way to quickly escape from annoying AOE like Desecrator, Frozen, and Arcane. As you get more used to the build and get better gear, you can switch from Teleport to whatever skill you prefer, or you can keep it if you really like it, like I do.

At low gear levels prism becomes a very useful rune for DS and will likely lead to a higher effective dps than using diamond shards. It loses its effectiveness around 2.5 APS.

How to play

Now that you have the gear and spec chosen, how do you go about farming? For starters, I recommend only using the build for farming Keys and Ubers. For Key farming, pick an MP level that you can survive against elites in while using the spec above. Shocking aspect adds a lot of extra dps to it will be much more efficient to farm with SA than without. Use Diamond Shards if you can, but it might not be worth dropping an MP level to use.

To start, if you have teleport, you can teleport directly to any ranged mobs. If they flee, you can teleport back on top of them. Start with using Frost Nova, hitting DS, and spamming your WW. I recommend using RMB or LMB for WW because you can just hold it down. Then you basically hit FN, DS, and EB whenever they get off CD. This usually ends up in the player mashing 3 buttons continually while holding the WW button. I usually have those 3 spells on my 123 buttons and keep pressing them continually.

When things start to get chaotic and you need to get out, release your WW button and press your teleport button a couple times. Sometimes it will take a half second or a second to register, and if you still have WW pressed, it often gets delayed even more since it uses an attack animation.

Section 3: Intermediate Guide (2.5 APS Breakpoint)

Now that you’ve either got a decent chunk of gold, or have tried the spec and want to use it for higher MP, you’re ready to aim for higher APS breakpoints. You are welcome to skip this portion and jump to the Advanced Guide if you’re more interested in the top breakpoints (2.73 and 3.0). To be clear, when I say 2.5 APS breakpoint I mean you’re above 2.5 APS, which means 2.50001+. Similarly for the 3.0 breakpoint I assume over 3.0. Your char sheet will only display 2 decimals so it’s best to calculate it manually. The formula is:

I also have an APS breakpoint table in my DPS/EHP spreadsheet. You can find it on the diablofans.com site in the wizard forums, stickied at the top.

The 2.5 APS breakpoint is one of the two main breakpoints used by most CMWW players. It is an easy breakpoint to reach while achieving a relatively high char sheet dps. This breakpoint is not recommended for Ubers, and not everyone is happy with the breakpoint, so use it at your own discretion. I happen to be one of the people who like the breakpoint.

Helm: Storm crow with crit, preferably 400+LoH
Shoulders: Vile Ward with vit or crafted shoulders (and try looking for +str for some extra armor)
Chest: Tal chest, preferably 9% IAS with resist all and armor, depending on budget
Belt: The Witching Hour, 9% IAS, look for Armor, Str, Resist All, Vit, and/or Physical Resist in some combo
Legs: Blackthorn (all resist and armor, depending on budget, hopefully 400+ LoH)
Bracers: creafted or rare with 4.5% crit, high int, all resist, plus vit and/or armor if you can afford it
Gloves: 8%+crit, 9% IAS, high int, resist/armor and maybe vit if you can afford
Amulet: 8%+crit, high CD, int and vit and/or all resist
Ring 1: 4.5% crit, 9% IAS, then some combination of vit, armor, resist all, physical resist, and int, depending on budget and what you need to reach the above stats.
Ring 2: same as Ring 1, optionally Nat’s ring with int and All resist if going for nat 2pc
Boots: Ice Climbers with 200+int, vit, and armor for higher dps and EHP or Nat’s boots with 70+int and some str. Aim for higher stats if you can afford.
Weapon: Chanto with OS or high CD, 1.63+ APS.
OH: Chanto with vit, high damage, and optionally extra int if you are going to use a chanto MH.

You have some options between boots and ring. IC+rare ring will give you a higher char sheet dps and you have a lot of options for the boots. I recommend vit+armor and 200-250+int depending on budget, with extra dex or str, but skip movement speed. The nat’s 2pc is pretty good because of the 7% CC bonus, and if you get AR on the ring it becomes quite a good source of damage mitigation. Either setup is perfectly valid though I prefer IC because of the higher dps. You might be tempted to use Zuni boots+ring but unless you have a good pair of AR boots you’ll lose mitigation and the IC+rare ring will give similar or higher dps. Also, unless you can afford a trifecta zuni ring you’ll have to choose between IAS or CC on the zuni ring, which usually means you drop the CC, so you miss out on a cheap 4-5% crit. If you can afford a good trifecta zuni ring then you probably shouldn’t be at this breakpoint anyway.

This is the most efficient way to reach 2.5 APS in my opinion. With a 1.63 APS wand you need 54% IAS on gear, which can be achieved with just 6 IAS pieces. For each 0.01APS higher you go, you need 1% IAS less on gear, which gives you a couple options for the IAS pieces. This also lets you use a high DPS amulet without breaking the bank too much with a trifecta.

If you want to run Ubers on occasion but still use 2.5 for solo or non-Ubers play, I recommend using a 1.63 or 1.64 APS wand because you can then swap to a 1.79 or 1.78 APS version respectively and hit the 2.73 breakpoint without changing any other gear or skills.

Section 4: Advanced Guide (2.73+ APS Breakpoints)

Gear suggestions:

Same as 2.5 APS suggestions with exceptions outlined below depending on which option is used.

There are 2 main options for reaching the breakpoint and are outlined below. Option 1 = OS wand, Option 2 = IAS wand. I recommend option 2 for most people and only recommend option 1 for very high budget builds when you can afford a high-end Chanto OH with APoC and mempo with high crit. Even then it might still be better to use option 2.

Option 1: Chanto with socket

There are some problems with this option because you need IAS from 8 pieces in addition to the Chanto MH to reach 2.73 APS. With a 1.61 Chanto you need 70% IAS, with a 1.65 you only need 66% so for every 0.01 APS higher you get with the Chanto you need 1% IAS less on gear. However, 8 pieces means you need IAS on 8 of the 9 main IAS pieces: Chest, Belt, Gloves, Amulet, Ring 1, Ring 2, Bracers, OH, and Helm. If you get IAS on the helm, you can’t also get APoC, which means you’d need APoC on your OH, which costs a lot of money. If you get IAS on your bracers, you miss out on potential DPS and EHP over a pair of good crafted bracers. The basic idea is you need IAS on all those pieces but 2 of the 3 between Bracers, OH, and Helm.

Option 1a: IAS on OH+Helm

For really high end gear sets, you can use a Mempo with crit on it. The problem with this set up is you have to get APoC on your OH and Chanto’s with APoC are very expensive. Using a Mempo also means losing the LoH from a Storm Crow so you’ll need to make up for it elsewhere (amulet or ring).

Option 1b: IAS on Bracers+OH

This means you can use a Storm Crow so you probably still have 2 pieces of LoH gear (helm and pants). The problem is you need to use a Lacuni, probably with crit, and you might need extra EHP which means Armor and/or Resists, so the price of the bracers can get high. However, if you don’t need a lot of EHP from the bracers, this will be a very good option because you can get a high dps OH for very cheap and you don’t have to worry about paying extra for an amulet or ring with LoH.

Option 2: Chanto with IAS

This frees up a lot of options in terms of IAS gear since an IAS Chanto will have between 1.69 and 1.79 APS. In other words, you will only need from 53 to 63% IAS on gear to reach the 2.73 APS breakpoint. Since you can get 63% from 7 sources. This means you only need IAS on both rings, amulet, gloves, chest, belt, and OH. Since you’re already using a Chanto wand, you might as well use the matching OH, and you can get a high damage one without APoC since you can get that from a Storm Crow. You can also use whatever high EHP, high DPS bracers you can find or craft without having to pick up Lacuni. The most efficient gearing will be to use a 1.78 or 1.79 APS chanto, which requires only 54% or 53% IAS from gear respectively, which again means just 6 pieces of IAS gear.

The only issue with this option is it restricts your DPS because you miss out on a potential 100% crit damage from a socket on your weapon. Still, this is the cheaper route and easiest way to reach this breakpoint. Also, if you gear efficiently you can still use high EHP and dps bracers and a high dps amulet to make up some of the dps loss due to lack of socket.

3.0001 APS Breakpoint

As stated before, I have so far assumed that the IAS rune from Slow Time is not being used. Now it is worth adding that if you have a 1.65 APS Chanto with max IAS on rings, gloves, amulet, OH, chest, Belt, and Helm, you can use the IAS rune to reach 82% IAS on gear and 1.65*1.82>3.0 which puts you over the 3.0 breakpoint.

If we again ignore that rune, and again assume Inna’s and Legacy Zuni pieces are off the table (because they have horrible EHP), you will need an IAS Chanto to reach the 3.0 breakpoint. You will also need from 66% to 79% IAS on gear to reach the breakpoint, since the Chanto can range from 1.68 to 1.79 APS. 79% IAS means IAS on all 9 available pieces, which means it will probably cost more. If you can find a Chanto with 1.75+ APS, you will only need IAS on 8 pieces (66 to 72% IAS on gear) which is the same as Option 1 above for the 2.73 breakpoint.

Section 5: Uber Bosses Gearing and Strategies

In this section I will talk about some gearing strategies for the Uber bosses, some of which might be mentioned above, but I’ll also explain some of the reasons behind the recommended stat targets. I’ll also briefly talk about CMWW strategy while fighting the ubers, though each group might use different strategies depending on group makeup and your individual strategy might depend on your gear level.

Below is a link to a wiz guide to ubers, written by RobertVarga. Some of the details are the same between the guide and my tips below but his guide is more detailed so feel free to skip the section below and follow his guide if you prefer.

Typically the gearing strategy for Ubers is the same as for solo farming. However, as a CMWW wiz, you might have the option to slack on DPS a bit because of the huge utility you bring in the form of freezing the bosses. Even a low geared CMWW can keep the bosses in a stutter lock of some kind. This means the bosses might move a little, but they move slowly so the DPS members of your group tend to have a lot of free time to just blast away at the bosses. This is the reason I recommend starting with a healthy amount of armor and resists before working on IAS and dps.

The build really shines at very high attack speeds, typically 2.73+. At that point some people can keep both bosses frozen for most of the fight, preventing them from doing most of their annoying abilities. The main set this applies to is Siegebreaker and Kuele. With high enough APS you can keep Kuele from casting anything for the entire fight, including his teleport and bubble. This makes the fight much much easier than having to chase him around and keep him stutter locked. Some people require 3.0+ APS to do this though, so it may depend on your latency. I haven’t gotten around to trying it yet but I saw a vid of a wiz doing it solo with 2.73 APS, so I know it’s possible.

If you want to keep SB/K completely frozen, you’ll want to use Cold Snap rune on FN, Diamond Shard rune on DS, and use Evocation passive. The armor you use is up to you, though I imagine pinpoint barrier would be ideal. I don’t know if you need more than 20 APoC so I have to try it sometime to find out.

If you want to tackle Ubers at a high MP, the easiest way to gear is to reach around the 2.73 breakpoint and simply take a hit to your dps and swap to an IAS Chanto’s. If you gear your farm set right, the swap will put you above the 3.01 breakpoint without further changes to gear.

Uber Boss Strats

Hopefully you’re aware there are 3 sets of bosses, Mag/Skeleton King, Ghom/Rak, and Siegebreaker/Kuele. Each set of bosses can have a few different strats based on group composition and your own gearing stats, but I’ll try to mention the main strats that I use and have heard people use effectively.

Ghom/Rak

This boss combo should be the easiest of the 3. The general method is to run to the middle of them, aim your mouse curser directly between them so you're not targeting either, hold down your "don't move" button (I bound it to spacebar), and spam your rotation. Both mobs are melee types and as long as you keep them together, Rak shouldn’t teleport away and neither boss should spawn any adds. The ideal situation is if you can stack them as close together as possible and then never really have to move.

If Ghom dies first, try to move out of the poison clouds with Rak so any melee players don’t have to worry about taking extra damage. If needed, you can run around a post and he’ll usually follow.

Mag/SK

If you have a really high attack speed, this will be the hardest combo because you can trivialize the other two fights. The main strat I use and I hear others use is to focus on Mag at the start, after you avoid SKs first attack. You still want to avoid the arcane sentries she drops but if you keep with her and mostly keep her frozen, SK will eventually run back to you and you can work on stun locking them both. When SK is away, I recommend you don’t use EB, to save the AP for WW for a better lock. Also, at some point she’ll stop taking damage, but your LoH and CM will still work so keep on her to prevent her from bubbling while your group focuses on killing SK.

One other thing to watch out for is SK has an attack that makes him immune to FN, so if you see the Immune message pop up or you notice him moving through your nova, you should get away from him so you don’t die.

SB/K

If your attack speed is high enough you can chain freeze them like Ghom and Rak, as mentioned above. Some can do that with 2.73 APS but others prefer to use 3.01 APS just for Ubers. Just aim your mouse curser directly between them, so you're not targeting either, hold down your "don't move" button (I bound it to spacebar), and spam your rotation. I can confirm it is possible to do at 2.77APS with Cold Snap rune on FN and shards rune on DS.

If your attack speed is not high enough and Kulle starts to teleport away and drop slow bubbles, you’ll either be asked to tank SB or Kulle. If you tank SB, just do your best to keep him frozen while doing as much dps as you can. You usually want to try and draw him to the side of the room also, so he's apart from Kulle. If you tank Kulle, you need to chase him around, find him after he teleports, and do your best to keep him in place for as long as possible. Either way, if a slow time bubble gets dropped on you, move out of it ASAP because it drastically reduces your attack speed, which makes your WW much less effective. Also, if your EHP is too low, you might have to move out of the cave-in ability Kulle uses on occasion.

Update for Patch 1.0.7: SB now grabs whoever is closest to him, and is practically impossible to stop, even with a very high APS CMWW. In groups it’s best to assign someone to be the grabbed person and just let the person stay in his grip until you kill Kulle. The general strategy is similar but now you want to start by running to the side of Kull furthest from SB and let SB get close to Kulle. Keep Kulle targeted and drop WWs on him while spamming your spells. Ideally SB will get caught by your FN and your WWs will still hit him. Don’t worry if your EB doesn’t hit him though.

Section 6: MP EHP Recommendations

This section contains some rough recommendations as a function of MP level, based very loosely on what I found to work at MP7 and what others recommend for MP10. Feel free to push the envelope and try higher MP with lower stats. Remember, if you have any misgivings about your EHP, swap to Crystal Shell first before trying to switch to energy armor. If your DR is too low in storm armor, and your dps isn’t very important for Ubers, feel free to switch to Pinpoint Barrier for extra Armor and Crit, or even Prismatic Armor to reach the desired DR. Force Armor is also decent for MP9-10 since Mag and SK can hurt.

For all MP I recommend around 30-40k HP, though lower MP can likely be done with fewer, and more is fine. The Damage Reduction column is based on 35k hp. The armor and resists are just approximations that give the appropriate EHP with the given HP. There are any number of Armor/Resist combos that will reach the given DR% so feel free to mix and match as needed. Also, I recommend you have over 2.5 APS for this table, so if you have less you probably want higher EHP.

MP

EHP (k)

Damage Reduction %

Armor

Resists

1

140.5

75.1

2850

350

2

153.9

77.3

3000

395

3

168.7

79.2

3100

450

4

184.9

81.0

3250

500

5

202.7

82.8

3500

550

6

222.1

84.2

3700

600

7

243.4

85.6

4000

650

8

266.8

86.9

4300

700

9

292.4

88.0

4600

755

10

320.5

89.1

5000

800

One stat not included in the table is LoH. In general you can get by with 600-1000, depending on mitigation and APS. At lower APS you likely need higher LoH to make up for the fewer LoH procs from having lower attack speed. Also, higher LoH isn’t bad and can make life easier and/or allow you to get by with lower mitigation.

Section 7: Basic 2.5 vs 2.73 APS Options

The short version of the debate about 2.5 vs 2.73 is as follows:
Use 2.73+ for Ubers
Use 2.73 if you don’t like how the build works with 2.5 APS
Use 2.5 APS if you don’t mind how the build runs at that APS and want higher dps

In general the 2.5 APS breakpoint is easier to reach with a higher dps. It is perfectly suitable for solo farming, particularly the high mob density areas like CotA and Keeps. Either option involves the same general setup: IAS on OH, ringsx2, gloves, belt, and chest.

The most efficient method of gearing for 2.5 APS, imo, is with an OS chant MH+Chant OH. The best speed to use for the wand is 1.65 but a 1.64 or 1.63 can work also. With those wands you’ll need from 54 to 52% IAS on gear respectively to reach the breakpoint, which means 6 IAS pieces. Usually that means dropping IAS from your ammy and getting one with high CC+CD for extra dps. Most of your IAS pieces will need max IAS though. If you opt for a 1.63 APS wand you can swap to a 1.78 APS wand to reach 2.73 for Ubers or to compare the different breakpoints.

To reach 2.73 APS I recommend using an IAS chanto, ideally a 10% IAS with 1.78 or 1.79 APS. That again lets you use 6 pieces of gear with max IAS and still reach the breakpoint. In short, with the right setup you can swap from the 2.73 to 2.5 breakpoint by swapping your IAS wand to an OS chanto.

Wow! Loroese, this is AWESOME! +1 and sticky sticky sticky please! (Do we have to report this in order to get a sticky? I think there isn't an admin reading wizard forums).

Some things that came to my mind while reading this:

Mention Blur as passive for the defensive spec; in fact, I always use CM+Blur+Evocation for fights when DPS doesn't matter

Slow Time: Stretch Time also works for allies, but only if they're standing in the bubble (currently it sounds like only Time Warp works for allies). In terms of DPS, though, Time Warp is the better choice, overall, of course.

SB/K: you call SB Ghom in that part of the guide, guess it was a bit late ;-) Also add that if you decide to tank SB, get him as far away as possible from Kulle.

MP EHP recommendations: if you go on MP10 with 320k EHP, I wonder how often you die? Essentially, for 80% of the elite packs you have to be really careful, move a lot and many times you'll just not stand a chance (Molten+Desecrator, Electrify+RD, ...) I'd add that these are the extreme minimum cases but my personal opinion is that doubling it helps to play MP10 without having to care too much about what combo you run into. Well, but we also have completely different HP definitions; I don't like to run with less than 40k, usually have 60k and for ubers even 90k HP.

Edit, about the EHP recommendations: I think it depends HEAVILY on how good your stunlock is. Every split second more that mobs are breaking out means you need more EHP. With a low 2.x APS and 300k EHP you'll be constantly dead on MP10. Plus, I can't possibly imagine that someone with 320k EHP would even dare to try ubers; you'll not stand a chance on Mag/SK. I'll try to play with my EHP values and post what works for me, but I find these too low as an advice (meaning, it raises expectations that this is doable, whereas I think it just means you'll survive against white mobs and weak combos, but you'll be dead a lot on the average elite packs).

In the section for 2.5 break point:

Storm Crow may work, but I would add Mempo here - many go with a Chanto MH and then the lightning damage on Storm Crow is almost for nothing. Maybe even mention Andariel's. After all, this is about getting more APS.

Witching Hour without any EHP stats is more expensive than Lacuni's with allres and crit, so rather mention Lacuni's for the 2.5 breakpoint (I'm at 2.74 without WH currently because on EU AH a WH with decent EHP and low DPS stats is still 70-100m)

Triumvirate for this breakpoint is just as problematic as Storm Crow, because you NEED a physical damage weapon. I switched to a cheap elemental damage IAS wand at this point and good a really nice rare OH that was superior to my Triumvirate at the time. You limit yourself soooo much on AH search if you go for all phys dmg weapon, plus this is not as important for CMWW builds as for Archon builds (where half of the BiS items have elemental damage). If you don't get rid of all your elemental damage bonuses in time, you have to spend a lot more later in upgrading.

=> All this was covered more or less in the 2.74+ breakpoint section, so not as important I guess ;-)

Thanks, I'll look into those points. I'm not suprised there's a few errors here and there considering how long it took to write.

For the EHP requirements, I should have said those are the recommended values at 2.5-3.0 breakpoints. I don't have 320k EHP yet so I can't try the MP10 one, though I guess I should try the highest MP I recommend with the EHP I have. As I said, more is better, but on the official forums those are around the general recommendation for MP10, including Ubers, though maybe it was more like 5500 and 850. I'll have to look through some threads. The general idea for ubers is you need enough EHP to survive 1-2 hits from Mag. I think she does about 150-200k on MP7 so that should be enough to survive 1 hit, though surviving 2 hits would be much more preferable I imagine. Nothing else really hurts as much, and from there you just need enough LoH to survive against Ghom and SB.

I'll make another post after trying higher MP levels with my low EHP. If I notice any problems today I'll update the table.

I added a note about mempo and visage for helm. Most people continue to use Storm Crow because of the LoH and the fact they're dirt cheap. Also, when you use a Chanto wand, you'll probably use the OH too, and it's much cheaper to get one without APoC and pick up the stat on helm than get one with APoC to switch to a mempo. Since the extra IAS can more easily be picked up on other pieces at this breakpoint, I saved the discussion for the next breakpoint when you practically are forced into using a Chanto OH.

Also, I think I stated somewhere that most of the gearing ideas have the specific DPS range in mind, so my recommendations also aim to give a decent chunk of DPS. It's definitely possible to reach the higher breakpoints at very low dps for fairly cheap, so maybe I should add a Budget section for people trying to gear for high MP ubers who really don't care about char sheet dps. Personally I like having decent dps in my CM gear so I can farm higher MP for keys solo.

At the 2.5 breakpoint I found it easy to use a black weapon (dagger with 11% IAS, 1080 DPS+int+vit+socket, bought for 10 mil) and Triumvirate (3 mil, 175+ave dmg or so). When I made the switch to an APoC Chanto OH+MH I lost a bit of dps and it set me back about 80-90 mil. I could have gotten a cheaper wand but I would have lost even more dps (I wanted one with 1050+ DPS and socket to minimize my dps loss).

I spent some time today doing a key run in each act for MP8, then an Act 3 MP9 run. Then I ran MP5 ubers. My goal was to examine my recommended EHP values and see if they're reasonable.

If you don't feel like reading over all my post, the results are that my EHP table seems pretty spot on for Key farming and most of uber farming, though swapping to a couple higher EHP pieces (such as really high vit blackthorns) will make the Mag/SK fight easier. Also, extra LoH is nice for Mag, so I highly recommend the 800 LoH per 100k dps mentioned above, and don't recommend going below 500-600 even at low dps since 600-800 is easy enough to get (Storm Crow + Blackthorn pants). The main use of high LoH while key farming is for RD+Electrified mobs. Otherwise 450 LoH seems fine at 96k dps MP9.

The low life on hit is because I just upgraded to the higher APS breakpoint and am still waiting for the money to buy a new amulet with LoH to cover for that I lost from swtiching to Mempo over Storm Crow.

I'm happy to say I was able to completely stun lock SB/K, so Kuele was unable to teleport or cast any slow bubbles. I did swap to cold snap for the ubers for that reason, but I used the +15% damage rune for key farming. I also used diamond shards and shocking aspect, plus Time Bomb on EB rune, if curious, though I believe I used CR for key farming, but that doesn't make much of a difference, imo.

For key farming, it did remarkably well. I had a few deaths due to not moving from arcane fast enough, or trying to out run some white mobs, but as far as electrical and RD mobs, it worked very well. I got lucky and didn't find any with both electrical and RD, but since if I had the 800-900 LoH I want, I imagine those would be mostly fine too since 448 LoH was fine for either. I believe it's possible to farm keys with those EHP values without dying, though you might have to use teleport and become very used to using it. I really like teleport in the spec...

I tried the same stats on Mag/SK and died twice, fairly quickly. I mostly attribute that to the low LoH, so I swapped back to my old weapon, helm, and OH. My new stats weren't much different aside from the extra LoH.

As you can see, the HP and EHP were about the same, though I had slightly less DR. Overall that means I should have been taking about 6% more damage than with the previous gear set.

With those stats we killed Mag/SK on the next try (though I did die to a sentry when SK was almost dead). I was able to completely face tank her swarms. She still cast quite a few sentries, but overall it wasn't too bad.

Ghom and Rak were rediculously easy. We actually killed Rak first and when he died it cleared the room of poison, which was surprising. Ghom didn't drop another cloud before we killed him either. I didn't try the combo with the lower LoH, but I am willing to bet it would work since I solod him on MP6 last night with my 2.77APS set.

So in summary, my EHP seemed fine for key farming, even at slightly higher MP. For uber bosses my EHP was a fair amount above the 202k recommended value, but I only really needed the extra EHP for Mag/SK since I was able to lock down the other bosses. An optional change would be to simply use Crystal Shell rune on DS, which would probably make Mag fight much easier, though I'm not sure you'll be able to keep SB/K locked down without going to the 3.0 APS breakpoint. That will be the next thing I try against the uber bosses.

Anyone knows how to make the mods aware of this and tell them to sticky this thread? It answers 99% of questions asked every day. The report button doesn't seem the way to go, it clearly says "only use for objectionable content".

Great guide, going to take me a while to parse though all this and see what I can recommend. I've been playing lately with a build using meteor liquify in place of teleport (that is having three offensive skills, Wicked Wind, Liquify, and Chain reaction) in the shocking aspect build and using conflagration as the third passive. Getting the long ground effect is pretty reliable and gives you 11 seconds of conflagration in the area. I wasn't have much trouble weaving a meteor every 2-3 energy twisters against 3ish targets and less frequently against single targets but still enough to keep them constantly on fire for the extra 10% damage. I am running a 30 APoC setup for this as I haven't advanced my gear much but I do happen to have reasonably strong APoC options in all three slots, and low EHP and not much for a budget at the moment due to just not playing for a while, so I was looking for ways to up overall DPS without sacrificing more EHP than just shocking aspect.

I definitely agree with Bagstone that this needs a sticky, just from what I've read so far there is a ton of excellent information in here.

very informative post. just one thing i noticed, how well/bad does lifeleech work compared to loh with higher dps?
ive been unable to find anything specific on cmww builds as they are abit "special" to say the least compared to other specs.

im currently running 47% crit, 217 crit dmg, 1.95 aps, 19 apoc with 111k dps (iceman#2422 if you want to check my stats).
as i was able to grab a cheap "good" chanto wand with 2.3% life leech (currently running archon spec for solo, but its the same gear).

very informative post. just one thing i noticed, how well/bad does lifeleech work compared to loh with higher dps?
ive been unable to find anything specific on cmww builds as they are abit "special" to say the least compared to other specs.

im currently running 47% crit, 217 crit dmg, 1.95 aps, 19 apoc with 111k dps (iceman#2422 if you want to check my stats).
as i was able to grab a cheap "good" chanto wand with 2.3% life leech (currently running archon spec for solo, but its the same gear).

Disclaimer: this is my theoretical thinking about this, I haven't tested this at all. Maybe Loroese has tried this and can support the following or correct me if I'm wrong - he has probably done every imaginable kind of testing with regard to CMWW ;-)

You can probably calculate or estimate this yourself, when you try out how much damage one average WW tick deals for you. The proc coefficient for WW is 0.125. Let's say you have 800 LoH, which means that you gain on average 100 life per WW tick. If you have 2.3% life leach (i.e., 0.46% on Inferno), 21739 damage per WW tick are the break-even point for you.

Hm. That sounds odd, because it seems to be quite low, considering that you'd have to average above all hits AND crits. Loroese? Or someone else? In any case, the more APS you have the better is LoH, because you proc more often while dealing the same damage (but reducing the WW tick damage, which makes LS less efficient).

Anyways, the point is that you lose a lot of potential on a chanto with LS. The better options are IAS (that's what I prefer, for better stunlock) or socket (what you should choose if you want DPS). You can get 1000+ LoH easily on Blackthorne's pants and amulet, and 1000+ LoH is more than enough for anything.

very informative post. just one thing i noticed, how well/bad does lifeleech work compared to loh with higher dps?
ive been unable to find anything specific on cmww builds as they are abit "special" to say the least compared to other specs.

im currently running 47% crit, 217 crit dmg, 1.95 aps, 19 apoc with 111k dps (iceman#2422 if you want to check my stats).
as i was able to grab a cheap "good" chanto wand with 2.3% life leech (currently running archon spec for solo, but its the same gear).

Disclaimer: this is my theoretical thinking about this, I haven't tested this at all. Maybe Loroese has tried this and can support the following or correct me if I'm wrong - he has probably done every imaginable kind of testing with regard to CMWW ;-)

You can probably calculate or estimate this yourself, when you try out how much damage one average WW tick deals for you. The proc coefficient for WW is 0.125. Let's say you have 800 LoH, which means that you gain on average 100 life per WW tick. If you have 2.3% life leach (i.e., 0.46% on Inferno), 21739 damage per WW tick are the break-even point for you.

Hm. That sounds odd, because it seems to be quite low, considering that you'd have to average above all hits AND crits. Loroese? Or someone else? In any case, the more APS you have the better is LoH, because you proc more often while dealing the same damage (but reducing the WW tick damage, which makes LS less efficient).

Anyways, the point is that you lose a lot of potential on a chanto with LS. The better options are IAS (that's what I prefer, for better stunlock) or socket (what you should choose if you want DPS). You can get 1000+ LoH easily on Blackthorne's pants and amulet, and 1000+ LoH is more than enough for anything.

I run a 2.6% life steal EF with about 400K DPS with a CM/WW spec. Last night on MP7, I got absolutely destroyed by Reflect, Molten, and Arcane packs. I did run Shards instead of Crystal Shell, though. Not sure as of now if that would've saved me. I'm planning on picking up a black wand with APoC and 800+ LoH whenever I decide to swap to CM/WW for uber runs.

Details: 55% cc, 2.3+ attacks per sec (30 WW ticks), ran Prismatic so about 500K+ EHP, also ran Bone Chill, Cold Blooded and Stretch Time so that probably sped up the IAS for more ticks and also more damage to myself against Reflect. I think I may have overbuffed myself, now that I think about it. But FYI, ubers were downed in about 1 minute or less each.

LoH: 800 per 100k dps (1200 for 150k DPS, etc)

2,400 LoH? the LS equivalent is about 2,000 LoH and I still got completely wrecked lol.

I run a 2.6% life steal EF with about 400K DPS with a CM/WW spec. Last night on MP7, I got absolutely destroyed by Reflect, Molten, and Arcane packs. I did run Shards instead of Crystal Shell, though. Not sure as of now if that would've saved me. I'm planning on picking up a black wand with APoC and 800+ LoH whenever I decide to swap to CM/WW for uber runs.

LoH: 800 per 100k dps (1200 for 150k DPS, etc)

2,400 LoH?

May I ask what your APS was in that test run?

Also, the max LoH is 2876 (3688 with legendaries). You can do it! :Thumbs Up:

I run a 2.6% life steal EF with about 400K DPS with a CM/WW spec. Last night on MP7, I got absolutely destroyed by Reflect, Molten, and Arcane packs. I did run Shards instead of Crystal Shell, though. Not sure as of now if that would've saved me. I'm planning on picking up a black wand with APoC and 800+ LoH whenever I decide to swap to CM/WW for uber runs.

LoH: 800 per 100k dps (1200 for 150k DPS, etc)

2,400 LoH?

May I ask what your APS was in that test run?

Also, the max LoH is 2876 (3688 with legendaries). You can do it! :Thumbs Up:

very informative post. just one thing i noticed, how well/bad does lifeleech work compared to loh with higher dps?
ive been unable to find anything specific on cmww builds as they are abit "special" to say the least compared to other specs.

im currently running 47% crit, 217 crit dmg, 1.95 aps, 19 apoc with 111k dps (iceman#2422 if you want to check my stats).
as i was able to grab a cheap "good" chanto wand with 2.3% life leech (currently running archon spec for solo, but its the same gear).

In general, LoH >> LS until 150-200k dps at high APS.
At low APS, Life Steal becomes more competetive because you don't get as many LoH returns.

Here's the math, with some results from my simulator:

Assuming Cold Snap and Diamond Shard runes with Evocation Passive, you'll see about 3.2x your LoH returns per second. Your effective dps multiplier is about 3.9 for single target, but only about 2.5 of that applies to life steal (~37% of the 3.9 is from Storm Armor and Shocking Aspect, both of which don't proc Life Steal). That gives you about 275k effective dps, or about 55k dps that returns life after accounting for the 80% reduced effectiveness in Inferno.

55k DPS * 0.023 life per damage = 1260 Life per second returned.
3.2x LoH returns means you would need 394 LoH to gain the same benefit from the Life Steal.

In short, your 2.3% LS is worth 394 LoH, so it's not very good. I actually thought it would be closer but the effective dps is pretty low for that APS. You're better off with 1-2 pieces of LoH, like Storm Crow, Blackthorn pants, and/or rings/amulets. Also, you give up a ton of potential dps by using a Chanto with LS instead of one with IAS or a socket.

To compare, at 2.5 APS you get about 8x your LoH returns per second, and at 2.73 it's about 9x, which makes LoH VERY good. However, you end up with about a 4x dps multiple that works with Life Steal so at 200k dps and 2.5 APS, 3% LS is worth about 600 LoH, I think.

@Jaetch
Your 400k dps does about 1360k dps of LS damage, so 272k of damage works directly with LS or about 7000 life per second from your LS. Your LoH multiplier is about 5.8 so the LS is equivalent to about 1200 LoH, meaning you need another 1000 or so LoH to make farming more managable. Alternatively, switching to crystal shell instead of diamond shards will probably go a long way, at least until you find electrical + RD. I'd actually think you should be fine against RD mobs, but maybe you need some more physical resists and armor. What are your armor and resists?

If the Time Stretch bumps you over 2.5 APS your dps multiplier is 4x and your LoH gain is more like 8x, so your life steal is about 8000 life per second which is equivalent to about 1000 LoH. This goes with the idea said above that higher APS means LoH becomes better.

@Jaetch
Your 400k dps does about 1360k dps of LS damage, so 272k of damage works directly with LS or about 7000 life per second from your LS. Your LoH multiplier is about 5.8 so the LS is equivalent to about 1200 LoH, meaning you need another 1000 or so LoH to make farming more managable. Alternatively, switching to crystal shell instead of diamond shards will probably go a long way, at least until you find electrical + RD. I'd actually think you should be fine against RD mobs, but maybe you need some more physical resists and armor. What are your armor and resists?

If the Time Stretch bumps you over 2.5 APS your dps multiplier is 4x and your LoH gain is more like 8x, so your life steal is about 8000 life per second which is equivalent to about 1000 LoH. This goes with the idea said above that higher APS means LoH becomes better.

I'll admit I'm not all too familiar with the logistics behind CM/WW, and last night was actually the first time I touched WW in a very long time.

My resists and armor stood around 600 and 3500 unbuffed, respectively, so I figured that's reasonable to tackle most things considering my DPS and the life steal. After I got knocked around by Reflect, I realized I was not healing nearly as fast with the massive number of WWs I was laying on entire packs (the rate at which my HP pool disappeared was so alarming it was actually hilarious).

I'm going to test this out solo tonight if I can find the time. Last night I basically spontaneously bought a 6 cc, 10 apoc Storm Crow and 10 apoc Triumvirate on the spot and jumped into an uber run. Tonight I'll try and pick up a decent DPS black wand with high LoH and see where that goes in comparison to my 2.6% LS EF.

If all else fails, I'm just going back to my original hybrid Archon build for ubers.

Wait. So you're saying that 1200 life regen equal 400 LoH? Roughly? Given that LoH is quite expensive and life regen is a throw-away stat, at least on EU servers, this is amazing. I actually never stacked life regen because I assumed it's useless. If I get hit by Magdha for some 20k or so (my HP pool is quite big), I'd need 15s to get back to full health...

My resists and armor stood around 600 and 3500 unbuffed, respectively, so I figured that's reasonable to tackle most things considering my DPS and the life steal.

Hm, are you talking about mobs in general or reflect damage (including Siegebreaker)? I think 600/3500 is quite low; according to Loroese's table it's about MP5/MP6 level. More DPS and some LS might at some point compensate for that for non-RD mobs, but I can't seem how you'd survive against RD mobs. Since the mobs always reflect 10% and your LS can't go beyond 0.9% you'd need over 90% mitigation (plus a 3% LS weapon and Blood Magic) to survive LS without additional LoH etc...

Wait. So you're saying that 1200 life regen equal 400 LoH? Roughly? Given that LoH is quite expensive and life regen is a throw-away stat, at least on EU servers, this is amazing. I actually never stacked life regen because I assumed it's useless. If I get hit by Magdha for some 20k or so (my HP pool is quite big), I'd need 15s to get back to full health...

Yes, at his APS 400 LoH ends up being about 1200 life per second. At higher APS it increases drastically. A rought approximation is 8x LoH per second at 2.5 APS and around 9x at 2.73, so that 400 LoH is more like 3200 Life Per Second at 2.5 APS. It's sooo much easier to get 400 LoH than 3200 life per second. Also, I should have mentioned that's PER TARGET, whereas life regen gear doesn't scale with mobs.